A Wild Frontier Intact
The howling grew distant.
Elizabeth had only narrowly escaped. An abandoned rail handcar had saved her from a wolf chasing her through the land of nothing, the land of desert, of the Western frontier.
She gasped, hoping, holding on to the rattling car for life. Somehow she’d known how to release the brakes, and the steep downhill tracks meant that she didn't need another person across from her to pump the handcar like a seesaw.
The breakneck downhill speed seemed to have outpaced her predator, and she felt a safety ahead. A safety, if unknown. She had a cautious moment to regroup, the bolts shooting down her spine easing up.
This was her dream. She had set out to conquer the West, against all female odds, against the judgment of everybody back home who had told her to stay small.
And then she heard it. A faint howl, contorted by the distance she’d worked so hard to put in between her and her predator.
She didn't dare to look back but stiffened when she saw the slope level out not even 200 feet ahead.
The handcar rattled, then creaked to a halt. Her one advantage, the fast pace gravity provided, now at an end.
The howling drew close.
With sweaty hands slipping, she tried to pump the handle, fighting to put the car back into motion, in vain. Maybe she was just the powerless, measly female that they all talked about.
Amid the pounding of her heart, she didn't notice the howling give way to an eerie silence.
Just ahead of her, a person. A man not powerless, a man. Could she accept a man's help when all she stood for was her independence? Which was worse, man or wolf?
She yelled, screamed for help, her tears and frightened bearing enough to gain attention.
Was this real? A reflection of the heated desert floor? A ruse of nature, a supernatural ruse?
The man jumped on, opposite of her, and pumped the handle. The fight or flight response prompted a unison having developed a tad too instantly. Elizabeth too trusting, too engrossed in maneuvering the escape to have her senses at hand.
They were pumping, pulling, pushing, on and forth, into the unknown, into safety. A safety too alluring to deny.
Elizabeth only looked up when she realized the howling had vanished. She studied her rescuer as they wordlessly worked together.
And then she saw it.
His sly eyes locking hers as they morphed into the shape of blood-orange almonds. His facial hair multiplying, sprouting from his pores.
“You have lovely skin. I can’t wait to wear it,” he whispered.
The bones in his hands cracked, shifting and transforming. He used them to muffle her screams as she realized that the man was the wolf and the wolf the man.
Her last breaths gurgling through her dying lungs, she watched him trot away. Back towards his wild frontier intact, peacefully howling the song of death.
Originally published in The Whisky Blot Magazine.
